’90s and ’00s period dramas are the most soothing form of escapism I’ve ever known

Welcome to Cozy Week, where we’ll curl up by the glow of our screens to celebrate all that’s soft in entertainment. Pour yourself a cup of hot cocoa and sit by us as we coo over the cutest games, cry over the tenderest movie moments, and drift off to the most comforting shows. Because it can be a cold world out there, and we need something to keep us warm.

It all started with a video borrowed from my school library. 

The year was 1999 and I had just started my first year at secondary school. Not that I’d have admitted it, but back then I was an awkward and rather uncool nerd who hadn’t yet found a friendship group to gravitate towards. Drifting aimlessly and friendlessly, I did what any introverted bookworm did: I sought refuge in the library. There, the librarian put me to work and gave me odd jobs to do like putting books and videos back on their rightful shelves. One lunchtime, while putting back some returned videos, I spotted a dusty box set with the words Jane Eyre sprawled across its case in an old-timey font. 

It was a 1983 BBC adaptation starring Timothy Dalton as Mr Rochester and Zelah Clarke as the eponymous heroine, Jane Eyre. I took it home and watched it over and over again until the tape nearly wore out. It was during this time of watching, rewinding, and repeating that I experienced a kind of cultural awakening. I found something that could bring me boundless comfort in times of great change, upheaval, and distress: period dramas. 

Watching Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester’s tortured and tumultuous love affair unfold on screen was not just a minor distraction for my Awkward Phase, it presented a whole other world to get fully immersed and lost in. Sitting cross-legged on my living room floor with my eyes transfixed on the dark and dingy halls of Thornfield Hall (that’s Mr Rochester’s gothic abode), I had found an escape.

The comfort I had found in Jane Eyre was soon eclipsed, however, when I discovered my mum’s copy of the 1995 adaptation of Sense and Sensibility —a film that I instantly fell in love with and have since revisited as if it were an old friend. There are so many things I love about this film: The noise Emma Thompson makes when Hugh Grant comes over to tell her his heart “is and always will be” hers. I love the way Sir John Middleton and Mrs Jennings crack each other up constantly, and the sound of their infectious laughter. 

Image: Clive Coote/Columbia/Kobal/Shutterstock

I love the way Alan Rickman, AKA the lovelorn Colonel Brandon tells Emma Thompson (Elinor Dashwood) he needs an occupation “or I shall run mad” shortly before riding off into the distance. Most of all, however, I love that this is a film that’s not just about love and sisterhood, but about how we respond to all that life throws at us — especially the bad stuff. There’s a sense that once the slipping over on hillsides and fainting in ballrooms are over with, things have a way of working themselves out for the better. 

From my early adolescence, all the way through my teens, twenties, and now thirties, I have periodically delved into a world of bonnets and modest hemlines. The films are set in worlds that look very different to mine and yours, set in stately homes and country houses, where flashing your ankle or holding someone’s hand in public might be deemed improper. There’s not the faintest murmur of present-day concerns to shake you back into reality. That’s what makes these films so effective at distracting you from whatever it is you’re going through. 

In my teens, during friendship fallouts or exams, I’d turn to Emma, the 1996 adaptation starring Gwyneth Paltrow. For 120 minutes, I didn’t have to worry about my GCSE maths revision, I would think about matchmaking, and how on earth Emma would make amends to poor old Miss Bates. The words “badly done, Emma, badly done” will forever be indelibly etched on my mind.

Image: Matchmaker/Miramax/Kobal/Shutterstock

At university, I fell under a deep and lifetime-enduring Brontë spell. I got through student dating dramas by delving deep into Cathy Earnshaw and Heathcliff’s torrid and never-to-be love affair in Wuthering Heights. I became intimately acquainted with the 1992 movie adaptation starring Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes. My love life — snogging fellow students on sticky dance floors in grimy nightclubs — scarcely compared to the romance unfurling itself on the craggy Yorkshire moors, wreaking mass devastation. Pro tip: Watch the 2009 adaptation of Wuthering Heights to see a young and long-haired Tom Hardy playing Heathcliff. A vastly underrated Brontë classic is Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall — the 1996 BBC adaptation starring Toby Stephens and Tara Fitzgerald is a real treat. 

Then came the EM Forster phase. I became obsessed with A Room With A View (1985) and Helena Bonham Carter gallivanting through Italy with Maggie Smith diligently by her side. Next came an infatuation with Howard’s End (1992) starring Emma Thompson and Bonham Carter as intellectual sisters carving out new lives for themselves in Edwardian Britain. 

My 20s became a kind of period drama Odyssey. I discovered North and South, the 2004 adaptation based on Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel set in the Industrial Revolution. Margaret Hale is from southern England and has just moved to the industrial north, where she meets John Thornton, a mill owner. From the outset, the pair are deeply at odds with one another. But, as you might have already predicted, this conflict eventually turns into quite the blazing romance. 

Image: Filmstore/Shutterstock

Throughout the ups and downs of that decade – the countless job rejections, the failed relationships, the broken friendships — I had an escape route. Whenever I needed a distraction from difficult times, Pride and Prejudice (1995) was there. There will always be something deeply soothing about Mrs Bennett’s flustered outbursts over her daughter’s marriage prospects. If I’d exhausted all episodes of the Andrew Davies version, then I’d watch the 2005 movie starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen (and yes, I do mean Tom Wambsgans from Succession).

If I was having trouble in my love life (and I often was), I’d watch the BBC adaptation of Persuasion (2007) based on Jane Austen’s novel, or Daniel Deronda (2002) — an Andrew Davies adaptation of the George Eliot novel. I’d watch Bleak House (2005) starring THE Gillian Anderson as Lady Honoria Dedlock. The list goes on and on: Gosford Park (2001), The Forsyte Saga (2002), Middlemarch (1994), Vanity Fair (1998).

Period dramas have, for me, been constant companions during challenging moments in my life. 

Amid the bonnets, bustles, bodice ripping, and all the talk about how-many-thousand-a-year Mr Whatshisface is set to inherit, it’s difficult to find anything to remind you of your real-world troubles. That’s not to say that these period dramas are trivial or out-of-touch, but rather set in another time that feels remote enough to provide distraction. But it’s more than that. These dramas are set in times where falls from grace can happen in an instant, where one wrong turn can turf you out of all good society, and one harsh word could cost you an advantageous marriage.

Whatever drama or disaster has befallen me, it’s usually not quite as bad as any of those things. I think that’s what they call perspective.